February 2, 2025, The Baby and the Sunrise, Luke 2:22-38 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ February 2, 2025 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

The thing about being in the dark is that you can’t really tell sizes and shapes and distances. That black shape over there in the corner looks like a big scary dog, maybe even a bear. But it’s only your jacket that you threw over the back of the chair when you came in. The yard outside looks perfectly smooth in the twilight, but it’s hiding a deep well that will swallow you up if you walk across it. You might run headlong into your friend, because in the dark he looked a lot farther away than you expected. Or you might reach out to grab something and close your hands on thin air because in the dusk it looked a lot closer than it really was.

But when the sun comes up, when the light turns on, when the door opens and daylight comes streaming in, suddenly you can see things for what they really are. Suddenly you know how big and how small, how high and how deep, how far away and how close, how beautiful but sometimes how terribly, terrifyingly ugly things really are.

Jesus once said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.” Simeon, holding the infant Jesus in his arms, exclaimed, “Now I can die in perfect peace. Now my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” This feast day, of the Presentation of Jesus Christ in the Temple in Jerusalem is, above all things, the proclamation of the coming of the light into the world. And it is about how that light changes everything.

When Simeon held Jesus in his arms he spoke a blessing over the child’s parents, and more than a blessing, a prophecy. And it wasn’t the kind of prophecy they might have expected when someone told them their little boy was the Messiah of God. In the dark the coming of the Messiah looked like battle and victory; it looked like the slaughter of the oppressor and the condemnation of the pagan; it looked like the exaltation of the Temple and the enthronement of Moses’ perfect law, with all its attendant statutes and regulations and customs.

But now, with the coming of Mary’s child, the rays of the sun were stretching golden fingers out over the darkened earth. Light was beginning to stream in through all the cracks in the crumbling kingdom of this world. And the whole world and all its kingdoms were about to be turned upside down and inside out. “This child,” Simeon told Mary and Joseph – “this child is destined for the ruin and the raising up of many in Israel. What looks great and powerful now is going to be exposed as a mere shadow in his light. And the things that are despised and weak now, in the days of our darkness, the small and the useless and the un-lovely: the growing rays of his light are about to reveal these as the lovely and the beloved, the first and the highest.”

“But the dawning of this light, this glory, prepared by God in the presence of all peoples…” Simeon warned them, “it’s not going to be welcomed with joy and acclamation. The light of this child is going to be a sign and the darkness will rail against it….” As John wrote later on, there will be people who choose the darkness instead of the light; there will be people who will reject the light outright. There will even be people who call the light darkness, and who will do everything they can to extinguish the light. And Mary, the sword of grief will pierce your mother-heart in that day.

We remember and celebrate here and now the day that Mary and Joseph brought their child to be presented in the Temple, bringing their humble sacrifice in obedience to the Law and in honor to the God they worshiped. It’s a glorious moment in history, the meeting of old Simeon and the widow Anna with the young parents and the child that was born to be the light of the world. We celebrate the revelation of God’s fulfilled promise to come into the world he created and loves, to make his home with us, so that he can heal our blindness forever.

But the darkness is still crying out in opposition to the dawning of the light. There are those in the world, today, who still blindly choose the darkness of fear and violence and judgment over the light of compassion and kindness and grace. We see it every single day; we see people stumbling in the shadows, unable to see the light of God’s grace in the faces of their brothers and sisters, seeing only race or nationality or class. The world deals in shadows: division, wealth, political power. And we Christians are certainly not immune to slipping into those shadows ourselves.

But we belong to the Light. By the light of Christ we can see that the person we called our enemy is our brother or sister. By the light of Christ we can see the rhetoric of things like nationalism, or party loyalty, or ambition, for the dark and deceptive shadows that they are, just lies that blind us to the love of Christ that makes us all human, all worthwhile, all deserving of grace, whether we are immigrants or corporate executives.

I suppose people have always felt like they lived in troubled times, but it seems to me that the shadows are particularly deep these days. People choose their own brand of the truth, as if that were actually possible, our nation is fractured along lines of color and gender and wealth and faith and nationality, and violence of all kinds has become such a common occurrence that most of us have gone numb, as long as it doesn’t come too close. Most of our neighbors live their lives in fear. Psalm 31 feels very familiar when it says, “I have heard the whispering of the crowd; fear is all around; they put their heads together against me; they plot to take my life.”

But we belong to the Light. Amazingly enough, Jesus told us that we are the light of the world. Paul encouraged us to be diligent in our obedience, children of God in the midst of a troubled generation, shining as lights in a dark world. And that might sound like we are being arrogant. We know very well that we aren’t perfect, far from it. But the light doesn’t come from us. Christ is the light, and as it says in Psalm 36, he is the fountain of life, and it is in his light that we see light. Our responsibility is to walk in the light, to open doors and windows, to be as shiny as we can. Because as sinful human beings, we know the grief and the fear – we know the danger – of living in the dark, and we are here to help people see the light that even our blind eyes have seen. +